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Spirituality vs Religion, Meditation vs Worship
2d ago
One of the signature characteristics of our time is that many people have a spiritual life, or they want one, but fewer and fewer people want a religion. This trend has been working its way into Quaker culture, as well.
Years ago, I was a friendly adult presence at a Quaker high school conference. In one of the exercises, the facilitator designated one end of the room “spirituality” and the other end “religion” and we were invited to place ourselves along the spectrum. There was a crowd at the spirituality end, a sizable group just left of center toward spirituality, stragglers thinned steadily out toward religion—and then there was me. I’ve always had a religious temperament. I have experienced this phenomenon many times among us since.
The result of this trend in liberal Quakerism is that many Friends and attenders treat meeting for worship as group meditation, “an hour in which to find your truth”, as the A-frame placard says which my meeting puts on the sidewalk outside our entrance. This is an invitation to meditate, not an invitation to worship.
Nothing against meditation, mind you. I’ve been trained in several kinds of meditation, and I practice my own mash-up form all the time. And I’ve been in several satsangs that practice group meditation, which are great. But they’re not worship.
Meditation takes you deeper into yourself. Worship takes you out of yourself. Worship is more like listening to music than like listening to the “still, small voice” within. Worship is paying attention to something that transcends self.
Of course, one transcends one’s self in deep meditation, also; and the “something” we attend to in worship is within us, too, yes. That’s why centering is the first stage in worship. The door to worship is within us.
But that something we seek in worship is not just within me; it’s within all of us in the meeting room. And more to the point, it’s within us—as an us, as a collective consciousness. There’s a “that of God” in the collective consciousness of the gathered worshippers, just as there’s a “that of God” (whatever that means) in each one of us.
When we find ourselves in a gathered meeting for worship, we know that this transcendental something I’m referring to is real, and not just a facet or manifestation or dweller in my own individual consciousness. We come out of worship spilling over with joy, and looking around, we see that our fellow worshippers are filled with that same joy themselves. We have shared the joy of gathering in the Spirit.
I think of that gathering spirit as the spirit of Christ. Not necessarily the spirit of the risen Jesus, which traditional Christians infer from their reading of Christian scripture; that seems rather unlikely to me, metaphysically speaking, and certainly not objectively verifiable but only for one’s self alone through personal experience.
Rather, what I call the spirit of Christ is the spirit of anointing, the spirit that Jesus invoked in Luke 4:18–21, quoting Isaiah 61:1–2—the spirit that descended on him at his baptism, the spirit that descended on the apostles at the Pentecost, the spirit that descended on the first gathered “Quaker” meeting at Firbank Fell when George Fox convinced the Seekers, the spirit that Friends have been gathered in as a people of God ever since.
I experience that spirit is an emergent communion of a collective consciousness that is fully focused on the transcendental Mystery that dwells in the midst of the gathered worshipping community (and in the midst of each worshipper’s soul). For sure, it may be more than “emergent”; that spirit may have identity, sentience, and presence independent of the gathered worshipping community. For all I know, it’s the spirit of the risen Jesus.
However, while the worshippers rise from such a meeting knowing that, yes, that was it, that was covered in the Holy Spirit, in none of the gathered meetings I’ve experienced has anyone, let alone the whole gathered body, risen up and said, Ah! Yes, there he was, that was the risen Jesus. So inference as to the Spirit’s preexistence or independence or sovereign identity is, for me, just speculation. I know it’s real; its identity and its other qualities, are yet a mystery; to me at least.
So why call it the spirit of Christ? Because doing so reconnects us with our tradition and at the same time pulls our tradition forward, and because Christ is uniquely and truthfully descriptive. For “Christ” is a title for a consciousness, not the last name of a historical person. “Christ” means “anointed”, anointed of God as Spirit for some work. And, in the gathered meeting, have we not just been anointed by the spirit, just like Isaiah was in chapter 61 verse 1, and just as Jesus was in Luke 4:15–31? “Christ” is the awareness that one has been anointed for some divine work and the consciousness through which one is empowered for the work. For Jesus in Luke 4, the “work” was “good news for the poor”, a ministry of debt relief through radical reliance on the providing spirit of God and radical inter-reliance within the worshipping community for its execution.
And for us? For what work have we been anointed? Or have we, in truth, been anointed in the Spirit in the first place? Do we, in truth, worship? Or are we “just” meditating?
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2 COMMENTS
treegestalt2d ago
What I intend in Meeting is ‘prayer’, ie to be knowingly present with and interacting with God. ‘Meditating’ can help move me in the right direction for that — but anything else can happen, instead, including riding a long train of thought into senseless (to me, anyway) dreaming.
God communicates _in_ experiences, not necessarily in words (& not necessarily without them.) But what I’m needing to ‘hear’ in Meeting or private prayer tends to be beyond me. Like ‘growing up’, I can’t expect it to arrive at any given moment. Typically, a long period of frustrated bewilderment has to be trudged through before arriving at an “Oh!”
I too am disturbed by the prevalence of Theophobia in contemporary culture, particularly in our Meetings. (But the absence of God, if that were even possible, would be far scarier. People think they’re living perfectly well without God — but only because of confused notions of what God is…) But while that renders Meetings a little bit lame, such Meetings still serve well as bridges to God.
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Bill Samuel2d ago
Early Friends would have been aghast at that sign outside the so-called “meeting for worship.” They didn’t believe in a different truth for each person.
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Doug Hamilton Not necessarily, only by typology if inward.
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John Jeremiah Edminster I've been pondering that, too, David, especially since Steven Davison posted his blog post on it. I think it depends on the will of the worshiper and the will of the Lord: of the worshiper, in that if I love my fellow worshipers and want them, too, to experience contact with God, then it's worship. And the will of the Lord, in that if He wills that we "meditators" experience His gathering us together, then it becomes worship as we receive His gift.
Doug Hamilton Not necessarily, only by typology if inward.
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John Jeremiah Edminster I've been pondering that, too, David, especially since Steven Davison posted his blog post on it. I think it depends on the will of the worshiper and the will of the Lord: of the worshiper, in that if I love my fellow worshipers and want them, too, to experience contact with God, then it's worship. And the will of the Lord, in that if He wills that we "meditators" experience His gathering us together, then it becomes worship as we receive His gift.
Chuck Fager I’ll have to think about it.
David William McKay You might even meditate on it.
Jim Fussell Worship is by a community, while meditation is individual, yes?
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Joe Snyder Interesting question, easily sidetracked by semantics.
I believe one can engage in worship alone physically, so I'm not convinced the community vs individual works.
It may be a matter of degree, but my sense is that worship is more about a surrender of self to Christ, God (dare I say Spirit without an article? there are so many out there), either or both individually or corporately.
Meditation seems more about one's individual state of mind, more about receiving inspiration than surrendering self.
There is a difference I see between quieting self and surrendering self. But these are not hard and fast distinctions, just how it relates to my experience as one who started out a meditater and am now more of a worshiper.
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Rich Accetta-Evans Worship can be meditative and meditation can be worshipful, so the distinction can seem subtle.
Less subtle and more important is the distinction between a Meeting for Worship and a group assembled to meditate.
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Rich Accetta-Evans Worship can be meditative and meditation can be worshipful, so the distinction can seem subtle.
Less subtle and more important is the distinction between a Meeting for Worship and a group assembled to meditate.
In a Meeting for Worship we seek to be present together in the presence of God and to be gathered together by God's Spirit.
That is very different than merely sitting together in the same room while everyone seeks his or her own inner quiet or state of mindfulness.
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MORE IN THROUGH THE FLAMING SWORD
Religion and SpiritualityI want to make a case for Quakerism as a religion. I suspect that many Friends prefer to think of their Quakerism as a spirituality rather than as a religion. For one thing, “religion” implies belief in God and beliefs in general, and for many of us, “belief in God” isn’t as straightforward as it was a generation or two ago. Also, “religion” implies tradition, a legacy of beliefs and practices that one has had no part in shaping, leaving you to either accept or rebel against them; religion implies an authority in the community that in some ways supersedes one’s own individual preferences. By contrast, “spirituality” implies individualism—personal sovereignty over one’s own ideas, beliefs, and practices.
What is the Religious Society of Friends for? — Spirituality vs Religion
Religion as Corporate Spirituality My one-line answer to the question, What is Quakerism for? is: bringing people to G*d and bringing G*d into the world. “Bringing people to G*d” has two parts: personal spirituality and communal spirituality. The last post’s discussion of worship provides a segue from personal spirituality to communal spirituality—that is, to religion. Several years ago I was a Friendly Adult Presence in a youth conference sponsored by Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and in one of the exercises, the young people were asked to sort themselves out by whether they had a spiritual life or not and whether they practiced a religion. The vast majority said yes to spirituality and no to religion. This made me feel bad.
